Brian McBride
Former CEO of Amazon, who helped the retail giant grow from an online bookstore to the multi-faceted company we know today.
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Brian McBride's 2025 biography
Brian McBride’s Background
Brian McBride is one of Britain’s foremost digital business leaders. He is Chair at Trainline PLC, one the UK’s great global tech unicorn successes, and Lead Non-Executive Director on the Board of the UK’s Ministry of Defence, a UK Prime Ministerial appointment. He is also a Senior Adviser with Scottish Equity Partners. He has recently stepped down as President of the CBI having led the organisation through the greatest crisis in its history.
Brian’s last Executive role was as CEO of Amazon UK for five years during its highest growth period. During his time at the online retail giant 70%+. They moved from primarily focusing on books and entertainment to providing everything from groceries to sports equipment. He also oversaw innovations like the Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Prime. He was CEO of Amazon.co.uk from 2006 to 2011. He held senior roles at IBM in USA and UK, VP UK and Northern Europe for Dell Computers and as Managing Director of T-Mobile (UK).
Brian was Chairman of ASOS PLC from 2012 to 2018. He has been a Non-Executive Director of Celtic Football Club PLC, SThree PLC, Computacenter PLC, AO.com, Kinnevik AB, and Abrdn PLC (was Standard Life). He has served as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the BBC, a member of the Huawei Advisory Board and a Senior Adviser to Lazard.
Brian has consistently led businesses that have revolutionised how consumers buy and what they expect from retailers. In his talk he looks at how this revolution came about, the rise of mobile and social media in retail, and how to engage with the new breed of customer. Drawing on experiences from some of the world’s best-known online companies he considers the common themes across sectors.
By looking at the history of technology and online, from IBM mainframes to smartphones, Brian looks at the lessons from how industries have adapted (or not) to the threats and opportunities. He considers ecommerce growth, Jeff Bezos’ focus, the role of leadership and the vital part mobile and social media play.
Brian McBride's 2025 talks & topics
Lessons in Leadership.
Evolve quickly or die – the challenge for all leaders today.
Brian’s talk is ideal for boards, Management teams, strategy/away days, business conferences and also for aspiring managers who are on their own leadership journey.
Brian starts with an observation about the scale of digitally-driven disruption today. AI/Machine Learning is becoming more widespread, in areas from contract creation, copy-writing, customer service, to faster and more accurate x-ray analysis and drug discovery. These trends and existential threats were happening before Covid 19 came along, but the pandemic has accelerated many of the changes, and we saw in many industries and sectors 3 years of disruption condensed into 12 months. The way we work, choose products and services, and shop have probably changed forever. How did all this happen?
To answer, he gives a brief outline of Moore’s law, which has made electronic products faster, smaller, cheaper. And Darwin’s theory of evolution shows us you need to adapt or you die. We saw the tech industry fail to adapt quickly enough, and watched many big names disappear, Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry… There are lessons here for all industries from Moore’s Law and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution coming together. There is a clear long-term trend of declining corporate longevity re public coys, will fall further thro 2020s. Av lifespan 15 yrs (21 in ’20, 32yrs in ’65). In next decade, 40% of Fortune 500 coys will vanish – not due to a cataclysmic event, but cos of a lack of techy, digitalization, and innovn (Carlo Rivis). This is a health warning for your coy. IBM, Walmart, GE, Ford, Exxon, JPM., P&G etc exceptions, all sound a bit dated.
The life of the consumer is being lived through the mobile device which is central to our work, play and health. He will talk about what AI is and why it is important and will change not just business but society. And why Leaders must keep up with emerging social and digital trends.
Then he compares from deep personal experience the different leadership styles and culture of the new digital giants, contrasting it with the IBM/Dell/ Deutsche Telekom style of companies as Brian has worked with both. Amazon/Google etc are nimbler, faster, take risks, experiment more. He talks about what good leadership looks like in the modern, disruptive digital world. He talks about the importance of building great teams and how to do it. He shares anecdotes and learnings by being interviewed and hired by Jeff Bezos, and what it was like working for him. He will conclude by talking about Amazon’s leadership principles, and about great Leadership by looking at John Adair’s 7 Characteristics of Great Leaders.
He is also happy to talk about his Black Swan event, the crisis that engulfed the CBI and almost brought it down in 2023 while he was President (Chair). Lessons about crisis management and some do’s and don’ts.
Brian’s talk is full of really useful soundbites and quotes which attendees will remember and use on their own leadership journey.
ASOS & Online Retail
Internet Trends